


Wild Things

by innie



Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Her power has a soft spot for Max.
Relationships: Mo (Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist)/Eddie (Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist), Zoey Clarke & David Clarke, Zoey Clarke & Emily (Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist), Zoey Clarke & Howie (Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist), Zoey Clarke & Joan Bennett, Zoey Clarke & Leif Donnelly, Zoey Clarke & Maggie Clarke, Zoey Clarke & Max Richman, Zoey Clarke & Mitch Clarke, Zoey Clarke & Mo (Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist), Zoey Clarke & Tobin Batra, Zoey Clarke/Max Richman, Zoey Clarke/Simon Haynes
Comments: 25
Kudos: 85





	Wild Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon-divergent — it splits from canon immediately after 1x09 (Zoey's Extraordinary Silence) and goes through one possible version of the rest of the season, with all that entails.
> 
> There's so much that didn't make it into this story (so many loose ends tied up, so many side stories) because it's strictly Zoey's PoV, but at least the shape of her story came out the way I intended it to.
> 
> The songs are all linked within the fic, but there's a list at the end of the story in case that's easier to follow.

The moment Max walks away from her desk, Zoey comes to the ridiculously belated realization that even with the cosmic cheat sheet of her superpower, she can obviously still manage to fail on so many levels. The universe can insist that she handle its hints promptly — she hasn't forgotten how freaky it had been when the distressed symphony of irate drivers had turned into Joan's song — but she's just proved that she can use her power to divine someone's innermost feelings and _still_ muster up only the clumsiest of responses. 

What the fuck had prompted her to say that she'd never stop Max from going after what he wanted and all but outright implying that what he's really after is the power and glory of the sixth-floor job? He'd _told_ her, ages ago, flat-out and unashamedly truthful, that he didn't think he was cut out to be Manager of Engineering, and sung her too many heartsongs to count about how much he loves her, and she'd ignored both and said to his face that he deserved the former but not the latter. Max looked hurt, but _resigned_ to being hurt by her, and that was the worst. _She_ is the worst.

She needs a muzzle before she goes out in public again. That might have been a good idea on the endless day of her glitch, too, if she could have stopped herself from upsetting the hard-fought equilibrium she'd just established with Max.

It doesn't matter how much she begs him to push pause and freeze time and not let things go any further between them; she can't control her power, and she certainly can't control _Ava Price_. And she doesn't get a say in what _he's_ feeling any more than she can rewind back to a year ago before her dad got sick. She doubts whether she'd have handled the revelation of Max's feelings any better then, even before Simon entered the picture, honestly.

She doesn't _get_ it — what does Max think he loves about her? She isn't hot — she'd totally given him an upgrade when she'd set him up with Autumn — and, okay, she's bright but not, like, a household name. She tells the same tired jokes, knowing he'll still laugh at them or at least give her that little crinkle-nosed frowny smile like he has _standards_ but she's wormed her way past them. And her newfound power proves that _the entire fucking universe_ deemed her to be so lacking in empathy that she needed a mental cattle-prod zapping at her to get her involved in other people's lives.

She looks over at his workstation, seeing the 5x5 Rubik's cube that he'd had constantly in his hands as he reverse-engineered the puzzles for the holiday party's escape room, the tiny tubs of knockoff Play-Doh she'd bought him one day from a street vendor ("that guy looked sketchy as hell, and did you seriously not even spring for the non-toxic kind?"), and the pretty, hardy plant he'd shown up with at company orientation. The only thing missing is him.

*

She had an attack of nerves the day of company orientation so severe that she basically crept into the building on tiptoe, sure that the security guards would spot her as a fraud and take her down like a pack of predators felling their prey in one of those _Nature_ specials David had insisted on scarring her childhood with. But the guards were friendly, made sure she knew to go to the HR space on the second floor, and buzzed her into the building. There were so many men in the cloud of cologne masquerading as an orientation room that she immediately felt small and insignificant. It was like college all over again, being the least cool person in all of her classes; one guy, already rocking a silky-looking manbun, was actually toting around a unicycle like that was a valid mode of transportation. 

The guy Manbun was talking to had his back to her, and she could see that his dark hair grew in an uneven wave at his nape. When he turned she noticed with surprise that he was holding a baby plant — something she probably should, as her mother's daughter, be able to recognize — in a little purple pot. Seeing it was like a nudge from her mom, a reminder that she'd _earned_ the right to be in that room, and it didn't matter how cool she wasn't. 

He caught her eye at one point during the round of introductions and smiled, and that gave her the courage to walk over at the first break and say, "Tell me that's not a Japanese peace lily." 

He laughed and said, "I'm Max, and you have excellent taste in movies."

"Max, I remember. You said you're from New York City originally. I'm Zoey."

"Yup, I remember too. And unlike mine, your interesting fact about yourself actually was interesting. Let me know when you're up for sharing why your family calls you Muppet."

"It's just my dad who does it now," she demurred, and he just smiled and nodded and went with her to the table at the back that held dispensers for terrible coffee and bagels that he said would make any Brooklyn bagel roll over in its grave.

"And by grave, you mean —"

"My stomach," he said solemnly, patting it. "I haven't had a decent bagel since high school."

"So sad," she said, comfortable enough to nudge him the teeniest bit, and then they were called back to join the group for a team-building exercise.

* * *

Dropping in on her parents — seeing her dad only every few days and failing to focus on anything but him the rest of the time — isn't enough anymore, not when her dad was dueting with Howie on a song straight out of a nightmare about the loss of the bond with a daughter. She really wants to get Max's input on how to approach Joan about taking an extended absence, but she's seeing his desk get barer as the days go by and his stuff migrates slowly up to the sixth floor. Anyway, she can't expect him to always be on the sidelines waving his pom-poms for her.

"Hello, Joan," she says, knocking on the wooden exoskeleton of Joan's glass box of an office. "I need to talk to you and to HR, and I didn't know which order —"

"Is this about the Leif thing again? It's only been a few weeks, and it will end soon, I'm telling you, it's just a question of getting all of this out of my system, and calling in HR is not where you want to go with this —" Joan says, all without taking a breath. Zoey's heard her sing and can attest to her lung capacity, but this seems next-level.

"No, I need — I need to take a leave of absence." It's hard but she gets the words out before any of the tears in her eyes succumb to gravity and spill down her face. Joan's softening expression is what does her in.

"Oh, hey, is it that urgent?" Joan asks, clearly floundering at seeing her wet face. "I can't — let me shut up. No, let me try again." Joan huffs a breath, shakes back her hair, and locks eyes with her. "Zoey, I'm so sorry. Yes, you need some time out of the office. But company policy is that this kind of family leave is only for spouses and dependents, so I can't sign off on a leave of absence." Joan looks righteously pissed at the words coming out of her mouth, like she wants to strap on Wonder Woman armor and take on Danny Michael Davis with her bare hands — or at least that's how she appears through a film of tears. 

"But since I'm damned if I'm going to lose my best programmer and the only other Double-X around here, what I _will_ okay is your working from home. I know you'll stay on top of things and you've whipped your team into good enough shape that they don't all need to be on leashes these days." There's a pause, and then Joan says, "Oh, and please don't think too much about why that imagery suddenly popped into my speech."

Zoey sniffles and tries to laugh.

"Go, Zoey," Joan says, gently. "Take care of your dad. And there's nothing official that HR needs to be notified about unless you don't call to check in once a day, okay?"

"Thank you, so much, I can't —" she stutters. In desperation, she snatches a tissue and honks into it with all her might. "I just, I will call first thing in the morning to set up a game plan."

"Just tell your team before you go," Joan says, opening the liquor cabinet and waving to make it clear that the contents are on offer. Zoey shakes her head, because she's been down that road before.

*

Eduardo and Adrian and Cole, the newest hires, turtle up into their hooded sweatshirts and stay at their desks when she breaks the news of her departure. Sam shakes her hand with maximum awkwardness and then sprints for the cereal bar. Raul hugs her, looking surprised at himself, and Jamison goes the opposite way, keeping things as professional as possible as he says he'll keep working toward his certifications and that she shouldn't have any concerns about leaving the calendar app in his hands. 

Tobin says he'll send deep thoughts to her SPRQwatch every day, but like, not at a scheduled time, just to keep her on her toes. She actually cracks a little bit of a smile at that, looking up into his dark, sympathetic eyes. 

Leif leans back against his standing desk and just watches her like she's a specimen under a magnifying lens. She thought that the sad clown self-portrait he'd drawn would live in her mind forever, humanizing him, but her brain has more than proved how glitchy it can be, and all she can think of now when she sees his face, simultaneously blank and smug, is the [asshole unicorns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsGYh8AacgY) chanting _Chaaarlie, Chaaarlie_ from the video Max showed her — not only the perfect piece of media to illustrate how creepy the brogrammers' abject fawning over their boss's then-husband had been, but also enough of a distraction that she didn't have to find the words to explain about the grotesque "Jesus Christ Superstar" moment she'd unwillingly witnessed.

She looks around for Max, but he's up on Six, presumably putting his new team through its paces. It ends up being Simon who, without a word, takes the box in which she packed up her laptops and equipment and carries it to the elevator. He sets it down, puts a sympathetic hand on her shoulder that drifts up to her cheek for the briefest moment, and then lets her be. She closes her eyes, dazed again from how gorgeous he is, and gives herself a minute before touching the keypad to summon the elevator. 

When the doors open at the lobby level, she shoves the box out of the elevator with her foot and it slides until it hits a shoe. She looks up. Max, pink-cheeked and panting, is standing right there, obviously having sprinted down six long flights of stairs. "Tobin," he gasps out by way of explanation, holding up his wrist so she can see _NOW, BRO_ flashing on his SPRQwatch. "Zoey," he says next, opening his arms like he's forgotten all about how she trampled over his feelings.

She needs him too much to question his motives; she steps forward and wraps herself up in him. "Talk about anything else, please," she says into his chest. He's wearing that moonstone-colored shirt Mo made him buy, and in its fine texture she can feel a distinct step up from his old wardrobe. She does have a bit of a soft spot for his old clothes, though.

He gives her a little squeeze, agreeing to her request. "I have to thank you. Did you know it was the Chirp pitch that made Ava Price think of me for the job?" She stays in his arms, willing him to keep going. His heart is pounding under her cheek, he is warm and comforting, and he can't hold a grudge to save his life. "Apparently I demonstrated 'right-brain flair' and a spirit of bold creativity. Oh, and Ava Price especially liked the escape room, though honestly that might have been more about Frank's nervous breakdown. She's a little intimidating, and somehow it's worse when she smiles."

Zoey isn't going to think about how she can feel the rumble of his words against her cheek and how intimate it is, maybe even more than when he sings to her. She's definitely not going to linger on the memory of how he'd thrown himself in the line of fire to save her when she'd snapped and sung to Danny Michael Davis. And she certainly isn't going to draw any comparisons between his work and how the three-way tangle she's embroiled him in feels like her own inescapable escape room. 

"And I'm not saying I'm all that," he continues, "but I think I got a hint of why they might need someone to shake things up a little. Ava Price's idea of sparking creativity was to make every engineer's desk a replica of mine, poisonous Play-Doh and everything."

She has to say something, though, or else he'll hold her for as long as she lets him. "Why are you calling her 'Ava Price' and not just 'Ava'?" she asks, tipping her head back to look up at him. That's not one of her better ideas. 

He smiles down at her, those big dark eyes fixed on her. "It is literally _impossible_ to separate the two names. It's like _Veronica Mars_ , or — don't make that little skeptic face, Scully — _John Cho_. You cannot just say 'John' and not say 'Cho'; you know it, I know it, and John Cho knows it." She steps back and he lets her go, bending to pick up her box. "Come on, I'll take you home."

* * *

Her suitcase is jammed into the bottom of her IKEA wardrobe and she can't find the torque she needs to get it out; it probably doesn't help that she's hungry and trying not to think about her dad or Max or Simon and feeling like a good cry should be her top priority at this exact moment. 

Mo walks in then, all soft in fuzzy slippers and a robe, and says, "Señorita, allow me." He takes hold of the handle, turns his wrist decisively, and the suitcase pops free. "Now scooch over to my place, where there's a grilled cheese and tater tots waiting for you, and I'll pack all your tragic clothes for you."

Comfort food is exactly what she needs, and she wipes her eyes with the side of her hand and smiles up at him. "You're the best, Mo."

Mo waves a hand that is casually elegant. "QED, Zozo."

Stepping into Mo's is like entering a universe where her power is the norm, like the old Hollywood movie musicals that Max's mom raised him on: there's color everywhere, and everything seems to pulse with a heightened life. Even the air is perfumed, though the best aroma is coming from the food waiting for her. 

How Mo knew exactly how to make the sandwich is evidently one of his witchy arts, and Zoey is just glad he's on her side. She fills part of the void inside her with good food and takes a long sip of lemonade. Mo breezes back in and says, "Your clothes are all packed, but I didn't want to touch any of your high-tech babies. Want me to pick up your mail or are you going to put a hold on it?"

The question brings her sharply back to the reality of her situation. She's moving back to her parents' house for the last month of her dad's life. When she opens her mouth to answer him, nothing comes out.

"Never mind. I'll just keep an eye out for your mail and keep an eye on your apartment. And your man." He holds out his hand in a clear _stop_ gesture before she can protest that she doesn't know who he even means by that, because she can't keep up with whose team he last said he was on. 

"I have to ask you something, babygirl. Max came by when he dropped you off" — Mo makes a gesture that seems to indicate the nook that holds the table, and Zoey can't tell if that means that the grilled cheese had been his handiwork, not Mo's — "and had an idea for something he wanted to give you. For later. With my help. If you don't want it, just say so and I'll never bring it up again."

Considering Max and Mo pretty much have the market on helping-Zoey-stumble-through-her-life cornered, she can't imagine what they have come up with that they think might not be welcomed. "What is it?"

"He commissioned me to paint a portrait of your dad for you," Mo says, gentle and forthright, and Zoey's breath catches in her throat. She'd just been marveling at her friend's talent, looking at that one self-portrait of Mo's, the one where he looks tender and fierce and vital, as she ate her late lunch.

"I — I think I would really love that," she says. She's been going through all her photographs and trying to find one that matches the picture of her dad she carries in her heart. He wasn't camera-shy, but she never seemed to remember to capture his image at the moments that meant the most to her. "Yes. Please."

Mo smiles at her, unbelievably sweet. "Whenever you're ready, just give me something to work with. I know what he looks like — don't act so surprised, you know I see all. I remember meeting him the day you moved in here, Max too, all of you laughing and sweating and eating terrible pizza. Eyebrows and all, your dad is a handsome man."

She makes herself smile though she can feel her lips trembling. That had been a great day. "I know."

*

Weeks before she blew it with Max by spilling her big secret to him, he'd come over to her parents' house with a meal from the Lebanese restaurant near his apartment. He always managed to find the best food — like he was part of some secret club that only people who actually knew how to cook got to join — and that time he hadn't even bothered with a lie about getting someone else's order by mistake, just rolled up with a full meal for all of them.

Emily had stayed late at the office to start prepping her paralegal for the fast-approaching weeks of her maternity leave, and David was taking advantage of her absence by having a massive freakout about missing the deadlines he'd set for himself on having everything ready for the baby. Max puttered around in the kitchen with her mom, while she was stuck trying to cope with David's particular brand of crazy and also keep an eye on their dad. 

"And I was supposed to get the crib today, and they were going to send someone out to assemble it this weekend, but all I've got to show for today is an email saying that it's now out of stock, and so there's nowhere for the kid to sleep!"

"Uh, except inside Emily for the next three months," she said. "I'm sure we can find another store that carries that crib, and I'll come over and help you put it together." He made a face at her. "Hey, which one of us put together all her own furniture?"

David scoffed. "Dad put together your furniture."

"No, Dad hung all my _shelves_. Max and I put together my _furniture_ , so in your face!"

Max popped his head in then, just in time to see her pointing triumphantly at her idiot of an older brother. "Um, dinner's ready, and I bet Maggie five bucks that I could carry Mitch in bridal-style, so —" he said, flexing his hands. Her dad huffed out as much of a laugh as he could manage, and Max eased him up to his feet and got an arm around his waist.

"All the food at this place is really good, but their labné is just," Max continued, trying to free up a hand for some gesture, and Zoey, walking just in front of them, turned to catch over her shoulder her father pursing his lips like he wanted to do a chef's kiss. "Yes!" Max concurred. "You'll love it." 

She turned back and saw David wearing exactly the same melting-snowman expression she could feel creeping across her own face, the sorrowful smile that she now saw all the time on her mother.

There wasn't much conversation over dinner — just eating was task enough for her dad, and there was no point in trying to fit a laptop or even his buzzer on the table next to his plate — and Zoey was glad of the silence after so much loud drama at work and various randoms and Max singing her their heartsongs. "It's getting late," David said; though it was only nine, their dad was flagging fast. "Come on, I'll drive you guys home."

She pushed Max to take shotgun, saying she'd rather curl up in the back than have to talk with a man who didn't think his sister could put together furniture. She was surprised to find herself going horizontal and drifting off, the low hum of their voices as good as a lullaby in the small enclosed space of the car. 

"I'd take Zoey up on her offer, if I were you," she heard Max say. "She's really good at putting things together." Yeah, she was; she fondly remembered the series of appliances she'd taken apart, studied, and reassembled, good as new.

David was silent for a long minute before bursting out, "Yeah, but I'm not and I'm the kid's father! What kind of dad can't do this stuff?"

"Uh, plenty. That's why there are people whose job it is to assemble your furniture. That's not the measure of a dad." David made a disparaging noise. "Look, I know your dad can do that stuff, but you should know you got the Cadillac of dads, and there's pretty much nobody who can compete with that."

"Not even yours?"

Max never said much about his dad, but David didn't know what a sore subject it was. She could hear Max make his tone deliberately casual when he said, "He left before I was born, to go back to his wife, and years later when he decided maybe he shouldn't have written off his youngest kid as a complete loss, he always made sure I knew what a huge favor he was doing me by taking me out for lunch."

"Jesus. Shit." She loved David so much in that moment.

"So there's one dad you're already beating. Look how much you want this kid."

" _Shit_ ," David repeated, evidently stunned, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror as she sat up. Whatever he saw on her face made him try to lighten the mood. "Did you really call my dad a _Cadillac_?"

From the sound of his voice, Zoey could tell that Max was grinning, shaking off his painful memories. "Hey, cut me some slack, man. You can't actually expect a New Yorker to know cars."

David laughed as if he knew anything about cars himself and stopped in front of her building. She hugged him from behind, let him pat her hand, and waited for Max to get out too, but David gestured for him to stay put and they drove off, Zoey watching the Audi's taillights getting dimmer in the darkness.

* * *

She's in the shower when she realizes she hasn't heard a Max heartsong since the night her dad fell, when it had been his decisive actions that'd gotten them home, his strong arms that had wrapped her up securely, his voice that had made a love song out of not very much at all. Is Max somehow learning how to shield himself from her power? Is he only allowing his emotions to reach a fever pitch when he's safely out of her orbit, on the sixth floor or alone in his apartment? Or is the universe giving up on her as far as he's concerned? 

She shivers under the cascade of hot water.

He's sung so many different love songs to her and she hasn't done a damn thing about any of them. It's only his songs that she never acts on, and he's the only one who gets to sing different songs to make the same point — the universe seems fine with letting him have his say about how much he loves her and all the different ways she's special to him, but everybody else hits repeat until she addresses what they're singing about. Plus, there is no one else she can remember who's been able to break through another person's heartsong, as he'd done, dry-faced, right after Autumn had thrown a cup of coffee at him. 

_Her power has a soft spot for Max._

Steadfast Max. Her rock, Max. Max who's gone silent in her head, whether because he's said all he had to say or because he's pulling away from her. The night of her dad's fall, she'd wanted the safety of fitting her body to Max's, and he'd sung his willingness to do anything she needed. She'd reveled in the feeling of security his song had created. 

Wait, but that wasn't the last time she'd heard him sing to her. She pounds the tile with a triumphant fist. The flash-mob had happened after that, a grand public gesture.

It had happened after he'd encouraged her to talk to Simon and see if her crush could go anywhere; after he'd taken out Autumn at her insistence; after she'd put a literal match to any chance she might have had with Simon; after she'd _literally said_ she needed more Max in her life. Max had waited until she seemed available to ask her for a chance.

And that — leaving aside the disastrous Chirp pitch when he'd sacrificed his dignity and chance to impress DMD — had been the last time she'd heard him make a melody into a gift for her. Scrubbing furiously at her hair, she tries to think. If she is supposed to respond to each heartsong with an action to improve or ease the singer's life, and her failure to do so for him means that the well of his emotions will dry up, then she has to do something. The answer is plain as day — the way to help him is to love him back — but she can't just flip a switch and _will_ herself to be in love with him. He wouldn't want that, and he'd never believe her if she says she is, especially now, when she's frantically trying to keep hold of every moment she can get with her dad.

Still, she misses his voice. 

*

Zoey is dumping all the laundry she'd jammed into the fancy gym bag Emily had given her for Christmas ages ago into the washer when one of Mo's early questions comes back to her. "Why oh why did the Powers That Be decide that the Power of Z should be expressed through music, when you know basically three songs?" he'd asked, twirling his finger to get her to spin and rolling his eyes when she pretty much fell out of the Louboutins he'd insisted she model for him. 

That's a good question. Why isn't it poetry or scenes from famous plays — stuff she could have memorized and researched on her own without leaning on her neighbor — or equations or programming languages? Pictionary could totally have worked; Max always claims that her stick figures are very eloquent, real characters with rich inner lives. 

Music has never been a big part of her life. The only times she can remember singing were family road trips, when her dad would start things off, David would join in, her mom would take over the melodies so that her dad could harmonize to his heart's content, and she'd come in on the choruses, the only words she sort of knew. That's it — she doesn't sing in the shower, doesn't hum absent-mindedly as she codes, doesn't even listen to music when she works.

But her first big SPRQpoint project — a project, she'd found out later, that had been kicked around by every other programmer and abandoned as both unfixable and not worth the time — was centered on music, specifically their free vidclip application, SPRQflash. Andy, the senior coder, assigned her and Max to work on it, and Max revealed his nerd stripes immediately by singing _[Flash! Aaah!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmrHTdXgK4)_ in the small conference room where she was setting up a workstation for them.

It was clearest when the vidclips were of people singing rather than speaking or doing something silently: the audio would get snagged somewhere while the video progressed smoothly, and given that the app automatically played the twenty-second clips on a loop, by the time the video had run through three or four times, the lag between audio and video was apparent to even the most attention-deficient viewer. "Ugh, this is terrible," she said, watching a clip someone had uploaded of some poor child auditioning for some singing show.

"And copyrighted," he said, looking over her shoulder. "What we need is a fresh clip that we can upload and watch degrade." He whipped his phone out of his pocket and aimed it at her. "Hit it!"

"What? I'm not singing!" she protested, snatching up her own phone like it would keep her safe.

"You don't have to sing," he tried. "Just do a speech or something. Like from _Hot Fuzz_."

"No thanks," she said. "You can do it."

"Oh, grasshopper, I'll do it. I'll sing, and I'll dance, and you'll code, and we'll beat this thing and go all the way to the top!"

"You mean the sixth floor?"

He laughed, rolled up the sleeves of his dark red shirt, and launched into a rendition of [the theme song from _Gilligan's Island_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfSLuEj99d0). He'd just belted out _just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip_ when he cut himself off to grin at her. "I'm not serenading you, Zoey. You're supposed to be recording."

"Yes! Sorry!" she said, and raised her phone to aim it, giving him the nod. That second time, he threw in a little jig.

Two weeks — and more TV theme songs than she'd thought a single human brain had the capacity to hold — later, the app was fixed and a paid version rolled out. Andy took full credit, which he leveraged into a job at Google, but it didn't really matter, since she'd had more fun in those two weeks of working with Max than she could remember having before.

They had their first movie night later that month. Max brought over _Singin' in the Rain_ and let her pummel him with a throw pillow during the yes-yes-yes, no-no-no scenes.

Zoey tosses the heap of clothes warm from the dryer on her bed and crawls on top. What if her power is music-based because she associates music with Max? Why is the universe pushing so hard for her to be with him?

Surely the universe has better things to do than trying to make her reconsider her stance on the frankly nauseating concept of soulmates. She doesn't believe in them, or in love at first sight, or one person being everything to another. All she believes in is what her parents have: being two people who choose each other and keep renewing that choice every day, when things are easy and when they are hard. But that's her parents, who are extraordinary people by any standard. She can't imagine what a mess she'll make of things if she tries it for real, how she'll hurt Max every day by failing to live up to the perfect Zoey he'd dreamed up and made his heart's core.

* * *

She's setting up for a video chat with her team — sitting at the opposite end of the couch from her dad, with her back against the armrest, there's only a sage-green wall with no embarrassing baby photographs behind her — when Tobin's _deep thought_ of the day comes in: _I've woken up over 10,000 times and I'm still not used to it._ She opens SPRQview and waits for her team to file into the conference room. Tobin looks tired and distracted, but manages to give her a grin and a, "What up, Zoey?" The baby bros all give her the bro-nod and Leif is the last to arrive, stalking in with a stormcloud over his head. 

"Hey, Tobin, hey, guys," she says. "So as you know, the best programming team ever is now down a key player; Max has accepted a role on the sixth floor." She's never seen shock ripple through a gathering before, and it is weirdly like watching a stadium full of fans do the wave. "Seriously, none of you noticed that his desk is now empty?"

Jamison says defensively, "I thought he was on vacation and the cleaning crew played finders keepers." 

"Uh, no."

"Bro is on _floor six_?" Tobin asks, sounding impressed, and she hears Leif muttering something about Shigero Miyamoto, who was just Max's uncle's college roommate, but she ignores them both to get the meeting back on track.

"Max will need to be replaced," she continues, eyes darting up when she sees her dad make some sort of reflexive movement, "but we can't count on finding the perfect candidate in the next few weeks."

"We turn away applicants every day," Adrian protests. 

"Applicants who then get hired by other companies; it's not like they're waiting around for us to change our minds," she points out. "What we need to discuss is how far this will delay our Chirp timeline, which right now stands at twelve months." Leif's head shoots up as he tries to stare her down through the camera. He says nothing, but the way he's drumming his fingers on the glass-topped table makes her clench up, half expecting a song and half not believing that her power will work remotely, however strong the emotion is. She's never been able to record any of the songs and dances as they're happening, because technology is apparently good only for capturing reality and not for proving the existence of Zoeyland. 

Tobin, sitting next to his best friend, looks back and forth between him and the screen showing her ten-foot head, and seems to grasp that neither she nor Leif is willing to blink first. "Okay, guys? Let's think. Max could jam code, but he was more of an ideas guy, so it shouldn't be too bad to cover for him, right?" No one else speaks up to run with Tobin's brainstorming initiative.

Simon walks by at that moment and must see her face on the enormous screen because he pops into the conference room. "Hey, don't mean to interrupt, just wanted to say hi to Zoey and tell you we're all thinking of you." He flashes that million-watt smile, she nods her thanks for the sentiment, and he waves as he leaves the room.

Odd, that she isn't worried, or even curious — okay, she's a _little_ curious — about a heartsong from Simon. He hasn't told her what's going on with him and Jessica, and of course he has no idea that she's heard the pair of them sing a breakup (or at least, a let's-pause-and-reassess) song. Her latest info was from Mo, who'd been surprisingly sympathetic to Simon's claims of emotional compatibility with her instead of his fiancée, but Zoey finds herself thinking instead of Jessica's words to her in that same conference room: she'd been genuinely saddened that she couldn't seem to help Simon but glad he had someone to talk to.

The slideshow she'd seen three times in its entirety emphasized that Simon and Jessica had a legitimate, fossils-in-the-sediment history. And she's heard from both of them that Jessica had been putting in the work to try to help Simon. It's Simon who is throwing that away and reaching for her instead, letting her make herself into a crutch for him. And she's been happy to do it because he really is that beautiful, and he'd come along with his dad trauma just when hers was accelerating. Only he hasn't talked with her lately, about his grief or about anything really — he's just kissed her like he'd die without her, and it was heady stuff.

But she's choosing to say no. It's not enough to say she won't be a homewrecker. She has to go cold turkey and deny herself — her unqualified, not-a-therapist self — the high of being someone Simon relies on; one of them has to make the hard choices, and it looks like it's her. "He's not the one," she thinks, only she says it instead of keeping it in her head.

The bros, huddled up and discussing coders that SPRQpoint should think about poaching from other shops, turn back to the camera practically in unison. Adrian says, "That's what we said, Zoey! Max wasn't a star!"

*

She's in the kitchen with her mom, both of them in their pajamas and drinking sugary peppermint tea out of the tiny, beautiful glasses bought on the Moroccan leg of her parents' honeymoon, when her phone chimes. She flips it over and sees an external SPRQview request for a video call from a user named _MoSwagger_. She grins and hits JOIN.

"Hey, Mo," she says. "Hey, Eddie. Whoa, hi, Max. Gang's all there, huh?" She isn't sure how to read the room on her screen — Eddie is ignoring her and Max is by the door as if he's on the verge of bolting.

"Um, what's going on?" she asks, before her mom says, "Zoeybel," and gestures for the phone. She hands it over and her mom smiles down at the screen.

"Mo? I finally get to meet the famous Mo? Hi, I'm Maggie." Zoey scrambles out of her chair to stay close enough to see what's happening for herself. Mo smiles and waves and Max lingers long enough to throw a smile at her mom over his shoulder. "Max, sweetheart, could you come closer, please?" 

Zoey reads the look that passes between Mo and Max just then and says, "I think he just went to Mo's to set up SPRQview, Mom, and it looks like he has to go."

"I just need one minute," her mom insists, and Max is a goner, because he is incapable of refusing her anything. Zoey watches him approach, picking out the details that make him _Max_ as they get clearer: the way his lashes cast shadows on the little pouches beneath his eyes, the straight strength of his nose, the curve of his lower lip that always catches the light and makes it look like he walks around with a tiny, personal spotlight. 

When his face is close enough that it nearly fills the screen, her mom says, "Honey, we haven't seen you in weeks, and I don't want you staying away because you think we need space or that you don't belong. I want you here, Mitch wants you here, and we'd be glad for any time you can give us. You're family." Max's eyes well up and he nods like he's been chastened instead of welcomed. He looks up at the corner, presumably to search for her, but Zoey instinctively twists to get out of the camera's range. "I'll say goodnight, then," her mom says, and stands, handing the phone back to her.

At least Mo waits for both her mom and Max to depart before saying, "Now _that_ is a lady who can lay down the law and make you like it."

Zoey smiles her agreement. "So, you look great. Are you guys going out dancing again?" Mo is in head-to-toe metallics, and Eddie is in black on black.

Eddie, still not making eye contact, heaves an irritated sigh. Mo swings around to face him. "Excuse you. I am not 'consorting with the enemy,'" he says, complete with air-quotes that make his rings flash. "Simon might be a hot mess, messing with two fine ladies, and you can be Team Jess all you want as long as you remember that I am Team Zoey and that our teams are not playing each other."

Zoey tries to keep her face neutral, even if she can't manage to look wronged; she should have confessed about her sexy song to and kiss with Simon before Mo jeopardized his relationship with Eddie. But it is true that she isn't Jessica's rival, and the sooner she removes herself permanently from the situation, the sooner Simon and Jessica can decide on the future of their relationship.

Eddie slumps a little but then smiles at the camera. "Hi, Zoey," he says, giving Mo a sultry glance to make sure the performance of his penitence is landing, and yowza, Mo's got nothing to worry about if Eddie's enjoying being told off that much. "Sorry for before."

"It's fine, I get it," she says, but she doubts either one of them, consumed in a kiss, hears her.

Zoey turns off SPRQview, drains her glass of tea, and trudges upstairs. Her parents' bedroom still has a faint light on, so she peeks in. Her dad is mostly upright, his back against the headboard, and her mom is lying down with her head on his shoulder, one arm draped across his waist.

How the fuck is it fair or even possible that all of this is going to disappear in a matter of days?

* * *

Max shows up first thing Saturday morning, a wrapped gift in his hand. "Hi," he says when she opens the front door, holding out the present. "It's for David — for David and Emily — well, for the baby."

She takes the gift and beckons him in, but his gaze is fixed on her vampire-bunny slippers and he doesn't move. "Is everything okay?" she asks. "Or is this the most inept round of ding-dong-ditch ever?"

He shrugs. "I came because your mom invited me, and I want to see your dad, but I didn't hear one way or the other from you whether you were okay with my showing up."

"Of _course_ I'm okay with it! How is that even a question?" she says as if she hasn't been sending him the most thoroughly mixed signals of all time. She _knows_ it; she just can't seem to _do_ anything about it, which should really be all the answer he needs — he deserves better than to wait around for her.

He raises his eyebrows at her vehemence. "Okay, well, great. Just — just do me a favor and ignore it if I sing to you, okay?"

She doesn't think there is a power on earth that could scrub the memories of his songs from her brain, and no way she isn't going to dissect any future songs as thoroughly as she has the past ones. "Come and meet Howie!" she says instead of lying to him some more. "He and Dad are out on the back porch."

She leads the way through the house and sits on the brick step, just next to her dad's padded chair so that his fingertips can rest on the top of her head. Max, still standing, looks so tall and strong above her that she has to close her eyes. A mournful melody starts up, and he begins to [sing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDvzpH0WITg): _Oh what's the use? I know I won't get through to you._ She opens her eyes in time to see his flutter shut and he presses his forehead against a porch column. _First a note, then a call, only yesterday I was yours, now every day I want you more. Close my eyes, oh, there you are, stop before we go too far. Every move I recall — shouldn't dream that you're here at all, it only makes me want you more._ His eyes open and fix on hers and it feels like her throat is closing up as she watches him grieve his love for her. _Sadness makes the vainest fools. Who's to say what's in store; just remember I just adore you, and every day I want you more._

She blinks and he's holding out a hand for Howie to shake. "Hey, I'm Max. Mitch, I'm so glad to see you." Her dad's fist, trembling too severely to miss, mashes the Taboo buzzer in his lap emphatically. "Well," Max says, his voice a little shaky, "can't beat that for a welcome."

"What you got there, Zoey?" Howie asks.

"Oh, it's a gift Max brought for the baby."

"That means we get to open it, right, because maybe my sample size was too small, but the babies I've met wouldn't have the hand-eye coordination to open a gift for _ages_ ," Howie says.

She looks over at Max for permission. "Yeah, go ahead," he says. She peels off the bright red bow and sticks it to Howie's sweatshirt as if it were a boutonniere and then carefully slides open all the taped flaps. The box holds a beautiful hardback of _Where the Wild Things Are_ and a stuffed animal — Moishe from the book, his striped shirt bright and his horns optimistically curved up — that's likely as big as her newborn nephew is going to be. Her dad's fingers convulse once, tangling her hair, but at this moment she only has eyes for Max. He _knows_ that that was her favorite book when she was little, that she'd made the Max in the book her imaginary friend for years, that Max and Muppet had been a team so strong her dad used to joke that he had three kids, two Wild Things for the price of one.

Her mom comes out to the porch then, red-eyed, and steps into Max's arms for a hug, and Zoey takes the gift of an interruption to the tension and sags back against her dad's leg.

*

After Andy Howard left for what Max called _Googlier pastures_ , it became clear that there wasn't really a line of command, and JP, the most tightly wound of all the coders, was foisted into the management slot despite his protests. Zoey had never been able to figure out if the group activities he organized were meant to demonstrate how unfit he was for the role or if he'd genuinely believed that the team might bond because of them. She participated — not enthusiastically, but efficiently — in his soapbox derbies and coding sprints and game nights, but the thought of their upcoming Karaoke Night filled her with dread.

Max, of course, was totally game, and positioned himself as the resident expert, persuading her that if she got her mandatory song done early, she could enjoy herself for the rest of the night. "Besides," he said, grinning at her, "getting you loose enough to enjoy it would take more alcohol than a lightweight like you could handle."

His logic convinced her, and he passed her the binder with laminated pages that served as the song menu. The bar was too dimly lit for reading to be easy, but she flipped through it desperately, looking for something she recognized by name. "Wild Thing" jumped out at her and she vaguely remembered that the lyrics were minimal and that half of them were spoken rather than sung. She copied down the six-digit code next to the song title and took the slip of paper back to the guy working the machine, and then it was a waiting game. She was squeezed into the booth between Max and JP, and they watched with a kind of horrified fascination the drunken gyrating of an entire bridal party. 

"Next up, we have Zoey!" she heard, and she stumbled to her feet and squeezed past JP, who was clutching his head in his hands, basically a meme of regret. When she got to the stage and picked up the microphone, Max cheered loudly for her. She kept her voice small to sing _[wild thing, I think I love you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSWInYFVksg)_ , but the microphone amplified her voice to the point that it could have filled a stadium, and by then Max had roused the whole bar and too many people to count sang back to her _but I wanna know for sure_ and then shimmied like crazy people to their own chant of _shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it_. 

She caught a glimpse of his exhilarated face and then saw him cock his arm and throw something her way. A crumpled-up piece of paper bounced off her chest, and she scooped it up on her way off the stage while everyone was still drunkenly dancing. 

JP had left, so she could sit without being pressed right up against Max. She spread the paper flat on the table to read the one-word note he'd written her: **[PANTIES]**. She looked up to find him laughing. "That's what I would've thrown if I'd been wearing them." 

"Only fitting tribute for a rock god like me," she joked back, the knot of tension in her belly gone now that she'd completed her mandatory song. Up on the stage, the brogrammers were butchering "Build Me Up Buttercup" and she tuned them out and slid a little closer to ask, "What are you gonna sing?" He looked thoughtful, as if any of it even mattered when the boss-man had washed his hands of the whole night. 

"You'll be the first to know," he promised. Two songs later, his name was called and he looked at her for a long moment before getting up to take the stage; his eyes were so bright even in the dimness of the bar, where electric candles were dwarfed and vastly outnumbered by the drinks surrounding them on every table. 

She didn't know the song he'd picked, but it was slow and heartfelt, proof that he could actually [sing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHutZXREZ0E), not just drunkenly shout into a microphone that stank of beer. He sang as if there was no one in the audience but her: _Soon we two are standing still in time, and if you read my mind, you'll see I'm crazy for you — touch me once and you'll know it's true. I never wanted anyone like this, it's all brand new; you'll feel it in my kiss because I'm crazy for you._

"Dude's nailing _someone_ tonight, guaranteed," Chin said, taking the seat across from her, and the words were like being doused with cold water. There was no way he was singing to her when he'd broken up with Maribel only a few months earlier. Every girl in the place was hanging on his every word, and he didn't need her cramping his style, plus she had a blind date with Emily's co-worker Brogan scheduled for the following night, so she decided going home and getting some sleep would be better than sticking around to see what happened next.

* * *

She's got guilt every which way she turns. Guilt over driving Max away, guilt over not knowing how much of the love she feels for him is romantic rather than friendly, guilt for knowing how closely he and her dad — the two men she loves the most — are linked in her mind, guilt for wishing Max would just keep selflessly loving her until she's ready to say yes. Then there's guilt for abandoning the brogrammers and not putting her career first the way they all have. Guilt for hurting Jessica, for making a mess of things with Simon, for leaning on Mo so hard. And now she's got a fresh wave of guilt drenching her when it takes a [heartsong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLDsLeVxOaU), sung through tears, from her parents to realize that they probably need some alone time. It starts off so quietly she only hears it as background noise, something Howie's playing on the kitchen radio, maybe, but then she recognizes the voices soaring through a gorgeous melody: _there was love, all around, but I never heard it singing — no, I never heard it at all till there was you._

She grabs Howie on her way out the door. "Let's take a walk," she says, trying to sound fun and spontaneous rather than like a terrible person, and he squints at her for a moment before gesturing for her to take the lead. She steers them in the direction of her apartment, but he stops at a café and waves her on alone.

As she walks, she calls Joan and leaves a message offering to swing by the office for a brief in-person meeting. She tries Max's work number but gets no answer at all. Walking into her own building feels like a reprieve, enough that for once she doesn't mind climbing all those stairs. Mo opens his door before she can even get her own unlocked, and pounces.

He's making flower crowns and sets her to work, rolling his eyes when she says, "You saw what I did to my microwave — are you sure you want me doing anything to your stuff?"

"Idle hands, babygirl. Now, what's up?"

"Just wanted to say hi, see what fabulous outfit you were rocking."

Mo grins and then asks, "And are you ready to give me something to work with for the painting?"

"Oh." She's an idiot — all that time in her parents' house, surrounded by photographs, and she didn't think to look for what she wanted. "No."

"No worries," Mo says, and pats her hand. Her phone buzzes then, and she connects the call and sees Joan's face in front of the SPRQview background.

"Hey, Joan —"

"Zoey, get over here," Joan says, "I need — I'm sorry."

"What?" she asks, but the call's already been dropped. She stands up. "I've gotta go."

"I heard," Mo says, his face suddenly solemn.

The fourth floor is a scene of chaos when she steps off the elevator. She looks for Joan, but her office is empty, and though she sees Simon, he's with his team in the large conference room and every one of them looks frazzled. Her own team seems to be milling around aimlessly, except for Tobin and Leif, who are having an intense and private conversation at Leif's standing desk.

Or it would have been private had Tobin not felt strongly enough to burst out with a [heartsong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMxRzGLERx8). She'd once complained to Max that people assumed they were a couple, but the pair that most people actually wondered about was Leif and Tobin, who had been joined at the hip until the Chirp. She's expecting some kind of bro anthem, or at least something upbeat, but what he sings is nothing like that: _And it took me years to figure out that there was nothing I could show to you, years to figure out that you were never really going to choose._ He's pacing in a tight semicircle with Leif, leaning nonchalantly against his workstation, at its center. _And how can I describe the way I slowly lost my love for you, when all of the time I thought I knew you?_

What the fuck is going on? Tobin is breaking up with Leif? Did he just find out about the affair with Joan?

"Zoey?" Raul says, putting a hand on her arm and drawing her attention away from where Leif is explaining something to Tobin, who's shaking his head and making a gesture with his arms that can only mean _that's enough_. Idle moments of wondering notwithstanding, she really never thought they were actually anything other than friends but she can't imagine that sleeping with the boss could harm a platonic friendship.

"Zoey," Raul says again, shaking her, and he's six foot four, so that shaking is serious business. "Aren't you supposed to be on Two?"

"With HR?" she asks. There isn't anything in her calendar.

"I'll take her," she hears from behind her. "I'm heading that way myself," Leif says, smirking at her. She does not want to get into a small enclosed space with him when he's giving her that look, not when she can see that none of the baby bros are meeting her eyes and that Tobin is closing the lid on an isolation pod where he's curled himself up into a tiny ball. Leif takes her silence for consent, pushing the button for the elevator, and Raul walks away.

Charlie Fucking Bennett is waiting on Two. She looks for Joan to warn her somehow even though she doesn't know what's coming, but Charlie and Leif are wearing identical smirks and that's more than enough of a sign that some really bad shit is about to go down.

The three of them, plus Joan, are all in the office of Belinda, Chief People Officer, but even Belinda's taken a seat to face the screen where Danny Michael Davis's disembodied head is apparently running this meeting. Leif files a formal complaint of sexual harassment against Joan; swears he felt he had to sleep with her to get the idea for his brainchild, the Chirp, heard; and concludes his litany of lies by saying that his actual manager, Zoey, had been out of the office for several days without taking an official leave of absence, and so couldn't be reached when he needed her.

DMD looks at her. "Nothing you want to sing about now?"

"Nothing to sing, got plenty to say." She doesn't actually know what to say, but she is furious — that Leif would do this, that she's been dragged into any of this when all she wants is to be with her dad. "This did _not_ go down the way he's saying it did." His snakey dance to "I Put a Spell on You" is all she can think of. "He brought his conspirator, Joan's ex-husband, with him!"

"I'm here in my professional capacity," Charlie says, like he's the only fucking grown-up in the room. "The two of you haven't been managing your team, I'm afraid, and in the eventuality that you're suspended or terminated, I'm willing to step in and tide the team over until Leif — or someone else of Mr. Davis's choosing — is capable of taking on the role."

"Joan," she says, "say something."

"Danny," Joan says in a crushed little voice that must be familiar to Charlie, judging by the way he smiles, "let me tell you my side."

"Tell it to Legal," he says, and the screen goes dark as five men in suits troop in to take over Belinda's office. The last one turns to close the door, only to have it pushed open by Tobin.

"No," Tobin says, "I think I have something to say."

*

"I should have brought a gift," Max said.

"Emily doesn't care about birthdays," Zoey reminded him.

"Everybody likes birthday presents, Zo," he said. "All I brought is this dumb —"

"Is that your mac and cheese?" Emily asked, standing in front of him with big hopeful eyes. "For me?"

"Yeah," he said, starting to smile. "Happy birthday, Emily." Zoey nudged him. "Oh, and congratulations on the new job."

"The money's good, but the perks are even better," Emily said, lifting the tray right out of his hands and kissing his cheek.

He grinned at her back as she headed to the kitchen, then turned to Zoey. "Did you hear that? I'm a perk."

"No, _cheese_ is a perk. You're just a weirdo in a Hawaiian shirt who's about to meet a bunch of fancypants lawyers that Emily's working with." He shrugged and continued to look happy. "How did you even have the energy to cook? We didn't finish moving me into my new place until midnight."

"Mac and cheese isn't a big ask. Not that you'd know, since your oven is probably in the running to take over from Marvin the Paranoid Android out of sheer boredom." She mimed a sarcastic laugh, which made him laugh for real. "You're such a pain in the ass."

"Not hearing a defense of the threads," she noted, leading him into the kitchen so they could grab drinks better than the beers David had in the coolers outside.

He nodded when she poured herself a glass of lemonade so she poured him one too. "A heartfelt tribute to our king Weird Al requires no defense."

She snorted into her drink. " _Such_ a weirdo."

"Nuh-uh. Hey, your dad's waving at us." He stepped out to the backyard and headed over to the grill. "Hi, Mitch."

"Hey, kid, long time no see."

"How can I help?" Of course he was going to be like that when she had barely any energy left after all of the work they'd done yesterday.

"Nah, I got this. Muppet, where's your mother?"

"You know," Max said, shooting her a smug look, "I'd love to hear how that nickname happened."

"Oh," her dad said, already starting to laugh, "Davy tells the story the best. But it looks like he's tied up making nice, so I'll spill."

"Why, Dad?" she said, but all he did was pull fondly on her ponytail.

"David was almost five when Zoey was born, and he was into _Sesame Street_ , reading like a champ," he said, even now sounding proud of his kid. "We'd told him that there was a baby coming soon —"

David, bless his timing, darted over then. "Dad, are there any veggie burgers on the grill? Emily's paralegal is apparently a weekend vegan."

"We've got them in the freezer. Do them in a pan on the stove so they're not on the same grill as the meat. But hey, tell Max the Muppet story."

She groaned and burrowed her head into her dad's chest. "Seriously, why?"

David, of course, wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to embarrass her. "You have to understand, all the babies I'd seen were cute little pastel things, like dolls. But then Mom had Zoey and when Dad brought me into the room to meet her, Mom was holding this weird-shaped lump with huge blue eyes and bright orange hair, and then she yawned and it looked like it split her face in half, and she looked like a Muppet." All three of them were grinning at each other like idiots, which they were if they had nothing better to do than mock her. 

"I think that says more about you than about me," she said.

"That's not so bad. Muppets are great! They're adorable and fun," Max said consolingly. She gave him a look. "And they can also be hot. Look at Janice."

"No, it gets better," David continued, not at all concerned about the paralegal's imminent starvation. "I didn't tell Mom that the baby she'd made looked like a Muppet, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. But every day Zo looked more and more like one, and then one day Dad was done changing her and I asked him how long it took Muppets to stop needing diapers and he laughed so hard that he had to kind of throw himself on the bed or else he'd have dropped her. And when I made Dad laugh that hard, that was the first moment I realized . . . I'm actually hilarious."

"Plot twist," Max whispered. 

She stared at David. "You're not, though. Like, objectively, you're not funny."

"You just keep thinking that." 

"I _will_ keep thinking the absolute truth! Emily is madly in love with you for some reason and even _she_ doesn't think you're funny." 

"Oh, shit," Max said and turned to the grill. Her dad's arm went protectively around Max's shoulders.

"She might put on a good show for you, but I assure you that I can get my wife laughing so hard you'd think she was billing it to a client." 

"That makes . . . no sense." 

"Your face makes no sense. Muppet."

"This is not even in the top five of the weirdest arguments they've had," her dad said to Max.

"You had to ask," she said accusingly to her best friend.

"Yeah, my fault entirely," he said with a straight face. "Wow, I thought I knew you."

* * *

"Dad," she says, "you're the best person in the world." He buzzes twice, somehow, though he's shaking pretty much constantly now. "No backchat, mister. Now, look up." She has to guide his chin and hold his eyelids open so she can administer the eyedrops that Dr. Hamara prescribed for the dry eyes he's developed since he no longer blinks as often as he needs to.

"Who do you think is taking that crown from you?" she asks, watching him try to smile for her. "Evan might be in the running, but he's just a baby, it's just pure potential at this stage. You're the real champ." He's not going to make it to sixty-five. He might not ever see his grandson and namesake in the flesh. "But I guess we can take another look at the contender," she says, fishing her phone from the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. Evan Mitchell Clarke was born two days ago and hasn't yet left the hospital.

She angles the phone so he can see, and a shaking finger jabs at the screen when she gets to the first picture of David holding his son. "Yeah, I can zoom in," she says, expanding the image so David's shining face takes up the whole screen, then slowly moving it so that the wispy black spikes of Evan's hair are visible, then his big eyes, then his tiny nub of a nose and dark pink mouth.

She looks at her dad, not realizing she's crying again until his finger pokes at her cheek. Evan will never know his grandfather. If she were still glitching, she thinks, this would be the moment for her heartsong, when every nerve feels like a live wire and she could just release a wall of sound, every dial turned up as far as it will go. 

She swipes impatiently at her face, then leans forward to pull the first photo album from the coffee table. It's the one with their first trip to Yosemite, and she tells him the story of how it lives on in her memory: stopping at every donut shop for the bathrooms and getting donut holes to tide them over until the next stop, David doing an impression of some weird guy named Yosemite Sam, how Mom had remembered to pack Zoey's favorite blanket but forgotten the bug spray.

He's looking at her, not the photographs. She shuts the album and holds his hands in hers, feeling them shake, willing him to feel how much she loves him.

Howie comes in with a veggie smoothie for her dad, and her mom shows up behind him with a sandwich and fruit for her. She's better now about recognizing when her mom needs time with the husband she's losing, so she takes the food and a couple of the photo albums to her room. She forgets to eat as she flips through the stiff pages, remembering Halloween costumes and having her tonsils removed, working with her dad on Lego designs and winning science fairs.

There's no her without him, no David without him, no Mom without him, because Mom wouldn't be as much herself if she hadn't had her best friend at her side for forty years. That's affirmed by the music swelling downstairs, one of the few [songs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZpZQG2z10) she actually knows: _Oh you're the best friend that I ever had, I've been with you such a long time; you're my sunshine and I want you to know that my feelings are true: I really love you. I'm happy at home; you're my best friend._ It's her dad, singing his heart out, and she wishes her mom could hear it.

But that's not how this works.

That's not how any of this works, none of this is fair, and hearing the heartsongs of the people she loves isn't making things any easier. But maybe it's making her braver.

 _Can I bribe you with baby pics to come over?_ she texts Max.

 _Now?_ he asks.

_When you can._

*

She doesn't hear him at the front door, or coming up the stairs — she's not hearing anything at all until his voice cuts through the silence. "Hey, Zo."

She rolls over, startled, and sits up. Her bed is a wrinkled mess and she's sure she doesn't look much better, but when she looks up at him he sits without a protest. "Did you go old-school with Evan's pictures?" he asks, gesturing at the albums stacked on her bedside table. "Zoey?" he says with a frown when she's slow to respond.

"Here," she says, putting her phone in his hand. "You can scroll." She watches him smile at the pictures of her nephew and part of her wants to stay silent, because she needs this Max, the one who's there for her, who loves her family as much as he loves her. But she's going to use the voice she's finally found. "You know, I resented my power for so many reasons, but I think the one that bothered me the most was how much time I was losing, watching people — people I didn't know, even — sing and dance all around me, and then being forced to help them. And I kept thinking, this is time I could be spending with my dad. There's nobody I love more than him, and he needs help too, and why doesn't that count for anything with this fucking universe?"

Max is still as a statue on her bed, looking like he's not even breathing. "Because none of it is fucking fair," he tells her.

"Yes, but." How can she say this so that he understands, when she's not even sure she gets it? "But it's made me think about everything I thought I had, in ways I never would have before. About the kinds of love I know." She takes a deep breath. "Did I tell you my mom said she wished she was the one who got sick, that it would have been easier on everybody if she were the one wasting away?" His hand shoots out to hold hers, fumbling for it among the peaks and valleys of her comforter. "I said no, but I knew what she meant. And maybe it would have been easier for her, and maybe for me, too. Because my mom loves everybody, it's like her default setting, and she'd love any kid she had, no matter how that kid turned out. But Dad," she says, voice cracking, "he loves me _specifically_ , the Zoey I turned out to be."

"Yes, he does," Max says, wrapping his arms around her. "Zoey Isobel Clarke, that's exactly how he loves you, and how you love him back. He _knows_ , Zo."

She can't do anything about the fact that her eyelids are tacky with tears, and she can't help feeling warmer than usual when she's this close to Max, but she's not going to say the words unless he can see her face and know she's telling the truth. He is her best friend, he can read her every expression, he understands her every mood; he's had five years to help himself to her heart but he's offered up his instead. She finds the words come easily after all. "That's how _you_ love me, and how I love you back."

*

In the dark of night, after a morning of home movies, a noon hour in the bright sunlight, and an evening when his shaking hands were cupped around the densely heavy body of his grandson, her dad sings his last heartsong to her. 

Leaving the bed where her mom sleeps fitfully, he gives her his best smile and beckons her to stand by him at the window. The moon is a pale jade crescent, the stars twinkling so faintly they might be figments of a shared imagination, and he sings what used to be her [bedtime song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIq8jLj5TzU): _Well I'd like to visit the moon on a rocketship high in the air, yes I'd like to visit the moon but I don't think I'd like to live there. So if I should visit the moon, well I'd dance on a moonbeam and then I will make a wish on a star and I'll wish I was home once again. Though I'd like to look down at the earth from above, I would miss all the places and people I love, so although I may go I'll be coming home soon, cause I don't want to live on the moon._

None of her dreams about space ever included her dad, dancing. There's no chance they won't from now until the end of her time on this earth.

* * *

"Angel," Mo says, opening his arms to her, "I am so sorry for your loss." He doesn't know that her power has disappeared after one final glorious swell of sound, fading in a crackly, staticky hum when the cacophony of competing heartsongs overwhelmed her at the end of the funeral. Only Max knows that she's no longer a mutant, and he figured it out for himself. He's loved every version of her that he's known; this doesn't make a difference to him. 

She thinks Mo will guess soon enough. Her life would never have intersected with his had she not had her power; she'd never have known how much creativity and joy he puts out into the world every day. It would have been her loss, and she plans to tell him so. But there's one favor she still has to ask. "Do you . . . do you think you could paint my dad soon?"

"Anytime. Just show me what you've got." Mo looks up when Max comes in from the other room, having ordered vast quantities of Indian food. Mo looks between them and smiles, and Zoey doesn't have to look at Max, or hear a song in his voice, to know how loved he feels. Making him happy makes her happy, simple as that.

"It's not an image. It's a song I heard at the funeral, from all these different people who loved my dad." That had been what got her through it — Max's warmth next to her, her mother's hand in hers, and the sound of so many voices, full-throated and rising in unison, affirming how generously her dad had lived. "I don't know what it is, but I know how it [goes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xomjQ1Gpsbo)." _Here I am, here I am, and the light is dying. Where are you? Where are you? Will you answer me? All alone in the quiet, ah my ears are thirsty for your voice, for your voice; can you answer me?_ Max comes to stand beside her and kisses her temple. _If I try, maybe I can see your shadow in the sodium light that masquerades as moon._ She thinks again of her dad's last song, the first song he sang her enough for it to become theirs, just hers and his. _Very soon, very soon, that's the sound of longing. Are you there? Are you there? Will you answer me? Only me, only me, with the world around me (only you and the sun is gone, only me when the moon is) only you, when the sun and moon and stars are gone, what's left is only you. Will you answer me?_

There's a hush when she finishes, and then Mo says, "I can make that work," and Zoey, emptied of tears and music, leans against Max and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> SONG LIST
> 
> Queen — Flash  
> Theme song from _Gilligan's Island_  
>  Robert Palmer — Want You More  
> The Troggs — Wild Thing  
> Madonna — Crazy for You  
>  _The Music Man_ — Till There Was You  
> Matthew Sweet — Thought I Knew You  
> Queen — You're My Best Friend  
>  _Sesame Street_ — I Don't Want To Live on the Moon  
>  _The Band's Visit_ — Answer Me


End file.
